Economic losses from US hurricanes consistent with an influence from climate change

by

Francisco Estrada, W. J. Wouter Botzen, Richard S. J. Tol

,

Nature Geoscience

States the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events has changed, but the observed increases in natural disaster losses are often thought to result solely from societal change, such as increases in exposure and vulnerability

Analyzes the economic losses from tropical cyclones in the United States, using a regression-based approach instead of a standard normalization procedure to changes in exposure and vulnerability, to minimize the chance of introducing a spurious trend

Uses statistical models to estimate the contributions of socioeconomic factors to the observed trend in losses and we account for non-normal and nonlinear characteristics of loss data

Identifies an upward trend in economic losses between 1900 and 2005 that cannot be explained by commonly used socioeconomic variables

Identifies an upward trend in both the number and intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin as well as in the number of loss-generating tropical cyclone records in the United States that is consistent with the smoothed global average rise in surface air temperature.

Estimates that, in 2005, US$2 to US$14 billion of the recorded annual losses could be attributable to climate change, 2 to 12% of that year’s normalized losses

Suggests that damages from tropical cyclones cannot be dismissed when evaluating the current and future costs of climate change and the expected benefits of mitigation and adaptation strategies